Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. -[2 Corinthians 4:1-6, ESV]

Every year I read about half a dozen megachurches offering expensive Apple products or even cars as incentive for showing up or bringing people to church. I’ve been told that people will accept an invitation to church on Easter 85% more often than other Sundays. Easter and Christmas- people show up if you ask them. Good. Great! Ask people to your heart’s content.

But what exactly are we giving away? How you get people to show up is how you’ll keep them around. If you give them an iPad this year, you better offer something bigger next time, and the next time, and the next time. If you’re resorting to cheap gimmicks to get them to show up, they’ll probably keep coming for the handouts, regardless of the message. Their incentive to show up isn’t to worship God or learn more about Jesus; you’re all but paying them to show up, raffling off prizes in hope they’ll get a little Jesus in the bag with that sweet iPad 2. Moreover, the underlying thought is that maybe if they win that iPad, maybe they’ll feel obligated to keep coming. Even put a little money in the bucket.

And if you only d it once or twice a year- does that make any difference? Are these people sticking?  If the surpassing grace that comes through Jesus’ blood isn’t enough, then what is? Do you really think the chance to win a car somehow makes a person more attuned to the Gospel?

What are you giving away? The Gospel you preach produces the churches you get. You can promote a false gospel through gimmickry; sucking people in by promising material things as if that’s what Jesus did… as if the Gospel of Jesus himself isn’t enough…

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. … For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. -[2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 21, ESV]

If that isn’t enough… if the life, death, and resurrection of  Jesus isn’t enough…

then nothing ever will be.

*The following article is reproduced in its entirety with permission.

God is changing the Church, and that, in turn, will change the world. Millions of Christians around the world are aware of an imminent reformation of global proportions. They say, in effect: “Church as we know it is preventing Church as God wants it.” A growing number of them are surprisingly hearing God say the very same things. There is a collective new awareness of age-old revelations, a corporate spiritual echo. In the following “15 Theses” I will summarize a part of this, and I am convinced that it reflects a part of what the Spirit of God is saying to the Church today. For some, it might be the proverbial fist-sized cloud on Elijah’s sky. Others already feel the pouring rain.

Before they where called Christians, followers of Christ have been called “The Way”. One of the reasons was, that they have literally found “the way to live.” The nature of Church is not reflected in a constant series of religious meetings lead by professional clergy in holy rooms specially reserved to experience Jesus, but in the prophetic way followers of Christ live their everyday life in spiritually extended families as a vivid answer to the questions society faces, at the place where it counts most: in their homes.

In aligning itself to the religious patterns of the day, the historic Orthodox Church after Constantine in the 4th century AD adopted a religious system which was in essence Old Testament, complete with priests, altar, a Christian temple (cathedral), frankincense and a Jewish, synagogue-style worship pattern. The Roman Catholic Church went on to canonize the system. Luther did reform the content of the gospel, but left the outer forms of “church” remarkably untouched; the Free-Churches freed the system from the State, the Baptists then baptized it, the Quakers dry-cleaned it, the Salvation Army put it into a uniform, the Pentecostals anointed it and the Charismatics renewed it, but until today nobody has really changed the superstructure. It is about time to do just that.

In rediscovering the gospel of salvation by faith and grace alone, Luther started to reform the Church through a reformation of theology. In the 18th century through movements like the Moravians there was a recovery of a new intimacy with God, which led to a reformation of spirituality, the Second Reformation. Now God is touching the wineskins themselves, initiating a Third Reformation, a reformation of structure.

Since New Testament times, there is no such thing as “a house of God”. At the cost of his life, Stephen reminded unequivocally: God does not live in temples made by human hands. The Church is the people of God. The Church, therefore, was and is at home where people are at home: in ordinary houses. There, the people of God: -Share their lives in the power of the Holy Spirit, -Have “meatings,” that is, they eat when they meet, -They often do not even hesitate to sell private property and share material and spiritual blessings, -Teach each other in real-life situations how to obey God’s word, dialogue – and not professor-style, -Pray and prophesy with each other, baptize, `lose their face’ and their ego by confessing their sins, -Regaining a new corporate identity by experiencing love, acceptance and forgiveness.

Most churches of today are simply too big to provide real fellowship. They have too often become “fellowships without fellowship.” The New Testament Church was a mass of small groups, typically between 10 and 15 people. It grew not upward into big congregations between 20 and 300 people filling a cathedral and making real, mutual communication improbable. Instead, it multiplied “sidewards”, like organic cells, once these groups reached around 15-20 people. Then, if possible, it drew all the Christians together into citywide celebrations, as with Solomon’s Temple court in Jerusalem. The traditional congregational church as we know it is, statistically speaking, neither big nor beautiful, but rather a sad compromise, an overgrown house-church and an under-grown celebration, often missing the dynamics of both.

The local church is not led by a Pastor, but fathered by an Elder, a local person of wisdom and reality. The local house-churches are then networked into a movement by the combination of elders and members of the so-called five-fold ministries (Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Evangelists and Teachers) circulating “from house to house,” whereby there is a special foundational role to play for the apostolic and prophetic ministries (Eph. 2:20, and 4:11.12). A Pastor (shepherd) is a very necessary part of the whole team, but he cannot fulfill more than a part of the whole task of “equipping the saints for the ministry,” and has to be complemented synergistically by the other four ministries in order to function properly.

In doing a puzzle, we need to have the right original for the pieces, otherwise the final product, the whole picture, turns out wrong, and the individual pieces do not make much sense. This has happened to large parts of the Christian world: we have all the right pieces, but have fitted them together wrong, because of fear, tradition, religious jealousy and a power-and-control mentality. As water is found in three forms, ice, water and steam, the five ministries mentioned in Eph. 4:11-12, the Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Teachers and Evangelists are also found today, but not always in the right forms and in the right places: they are often frozen to ice in the rigid system of institutionalized Christianity; they sometimes exist as clear water; or they have vanished like steam into the thin air of free-flying ministries and “independent” churches, accountable to no-one. As it is best to water flowers with the fluid version of water, these five equipping ministries will have to be transformed back into new, and at the same time age-old, forms, so that the whole spiritual organism can flourish and the individual “ministers” can find their proper role and place in the whole. That is one more reason why we need to return back to the Maker’s original and blueprint for the Church.

No expression of a New Testament church is ever led by just one professional “holy man” doing the business of communicating with God and then feeding some relatively passive religious consumers Moses-style. Christianity has adopted this method from pagan religions, or at best from the Old Testament. The heavy professionalisation of the church since Constantine has now been a pervasive influence long enough, dividing the people of God artificially into laity and clergy. According to the New Testament (1 Tim. 2:5), “there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” God simply does not bless religious professionals to force themselves in-between people and God forever. The veil is torn, and God is allowing people to access Himself directly through Jesus Christ, the only Way. To enable the priesthood of all believers, the present system will have to change completely. Bureaucracy is the most dubious of all administrative systems, because it basically asks only two questions: yes or no. There is no room for spontaneity and humanity, no room for real life. This may be OK for politics and companies, but not the Church. God seems to be in the business of delivering His Church from a Babylonian captivity of religious bureaucrats and controlling spirits into the public domain, the hands of ordinary people made extraordinary by God, who, like in the old days, may still smell of fish, perfume and revolution.

The “Body of Christ” is a vivid description of an organic, not an organized, being. Church consists on its local level of a multitude of spiritual families, which are organically related to each other as a network, where the way the pieces are functioning together is an integral part of the message of the whole. What has become a maximum of organization with a minimum of organism, has to be changed into a minimum of organization to allow a maximum of organism. Too much organization has, like a straightjacket, often choked the organism for fear that something might go wrong. Fear is the opposite of faith, and not exactly a Christian virtue. Fear wants to control, faith can trust. Control, therefore, may be good, but trust is better. The Body of Christ is entrusted by God into the hands of steward-minded people with a supernatural charismatic gift to believe God that He is still in control, even if they are not. A development of trust-related regional and national networks, not a new arrangement of political ecumenism is necessary for organic forms of Christianity to reemerge.

The image of much of contemporary Christianity can be summarized, a bit euphemistically, as holy people coming regularly to a holy place at a holy day at a holy hour to participate in a holy ritual lead by a holy man dressed in holy clothes against a holy fee. Since this regular performance-oriented enterprise called “worship service” requires a lot of organizational talent and administrative bureaucracy to keep going, formalized and institutionalized patterns developed quickly into rigid traditions. Statistically, a traditional 1-2 hour “worship service” is very resource-hungry but actually produces very little fruit in terms of discipling people, that is, in changed lives. Economically speaking, it might be a “high input and low output” structure. Traditionally, the desire to “worship in the right way” has led to much denominationalism, confessionalism and nominalism. This not only ignores that Christians are called to “worship in truth and in spirit,” not in cathedrals holding songbooks, but also ignores that most of life is informal, and so is Christianity as “the Way of Life.” Do we need to change from being powerful actors to start “acting powerfully?”

The church is changing back from being a Come-structure to being again a Go-structure. As one result, the Church needs to stop trying to bring people “into the church,” and start bringing the Church to the people. The mission of the Church will never be accomplished just by adding to the existing structure; it will take nothing less than a mushrooming of the church through spontaneous multiplication of itself into areas of the population of the world, where Christ is not yet known.

Church tradition has managed to “celebrate the Lord’s Supper” in a homeopathic and deeply religious form, characteristically with a few drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face. However, the “Lord’s Supper” was actually more a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning, than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning. God is restoring eating back into our meeting.

Jesus called a universal movement, and what came was a series of religious companies with global chains marketing their special brands of Christianity and competing with each other. Through this branding of Christianity most of Protestantism has, therefore, become politically insignificant and often more concerned with traditional specialties and religious infighting than with developing a collective testimony before the world. Jesus simply never asked people to organize themselves into denominations. In the early days of the Church, Christians had a dual identity: they were truly His church and vertically converted to God, and then organized themselves according to geography, that is, converting also horizontally to each other on earth. This means not only Christian neighbors organizing themselves into neighborhood- or house-churches, where they share their lives locally, but Christians coming together as a collective identity as much as they can for citywide or regional celebrations expressing the corporateness of the Church of the city or region. Authenticity in the neighborhoods connected with a regional or citywide corporate identity will make the Church not only politically significant and spiritually convincing, but will allow a return to the biblical model of the City-Church.

They crucified Jesus, the Boss of all the Christians. Today, his followers are often more into titles, medals and social respectability, or, worst of all, they remain silent and are not worth being noticed at all. “Blessed are you when you are persecuted”, says Jesus. Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness and sinfulness, a world overcome by greed, materialism, jealousy and any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money and power. Contemporary Christianity in many countries is simply too harmless and polite to be worth persecuting. But as Christians again live out New Testament standards of life and, for example, call sin as sin, conversion or persecution has been, is and will be the natural reaction of the world. Instead of nesting comfortably in temporary zones of religious liberty, Christians will have to prepare to be again discovered as the main culprits against global humanism, the modern slavery of having to have fun and the outright worship of Self, the wrong centre of the universe. That is why Christians will and must feel the “repressive tolerance” of a world which has lost any absolutes and therefore refuses to recognize and obey its creator God with his absolute standards. Coupled with the growing ideologisation, privatization and spiritualisation of politics and economics, Christians will, sooner than most think, have their chance to stand happily accused in the company of Jesus. They need to prepare now for the future by developing a persecution-proof spirit and an even more persecution-proof structure.

Where is the easiest place, say, for a man to be spiritual? Maybe again, is it hiding behind a big pulpit, dressed up in holy robes, preaching holy words to a faceless crowd and then disappearing into an office? And what is the most difficult, and therefore most meaningful, place for a man to be spiritual? At home, in the presence of his wife and children, where everything he does and says is automatically put through a spiritual litmus test against reality, where hypocrisy can be effectively weeded out and authenticity can grow. Much of Christianity has fled the family, often as a place of its own spiritual defeat, and then has organized artificial performances in sacred buildings far from the atmosphere of real life. As God is in the business of recapturing the homes, the church turns back to its roots, back to where it came from. It literally comes home, completing the circle of Church history at the end of world history.

As Christians of all walks of life, from all denominations and backgrounds, feel a clear echo in their spirit to what God’s Spirit is saying to the Church, and start to hear globally in order to act locally, they begin to function again as one body. They organize themselves into neighborhood house-churches and meet in regional or city-celebrations. You are invited to become part of this movement and make your own contribution. Maybe your home, too, will become a house that changes the world.

*Disclaimer* – These are my brief thoughts. These are not intended to be the “final word” but rather the “beginning of a conversation”

Church Planting is highly romanticized and is the “sexy” thing to do within the sub-culture of the American pastor. If you are truly revolutionary, edgy, a rebel, then you, my friend, need to plant a church… or at least that’s what we’re told.

But there are not only one, but multiple elephants in the room. Everyone is thinking it, discussing it at their local trendy coffee shop (or, as in the case of the newest “cool place” to hang – Panera Bread) and talking about it on Twitter. And, yet, nothing is changing. The peer pressure is just too great for most.

Church Planting is a heavy endeavor not for the faint-hearted. It truly is a difficult task that needs to be for the truly called (which, sadly, knocks about 1/2 of you reading this out). I don’t know what the current statistics on the survivability rate for church plants is, but a few years ago it was 20%. That means that 80% of church plants failed. That means that either A) God didn’t know what he was doing or, B) 80% of those who planted weren’t really called.

So what is the future of church planting? What needs to change within the church planting circles in order that we may see a new breed of planter emerge? I hope this begins the discussion on the right path.

Church Planting and the Status Quo

What Joe didn’t know when he asked me to do this was that I have been working on this for quite some time. This is just a brief outline of my total thoughts on the subject. I hope that this brief synopsis begins a discussion about some serious elephants in the room.

Most planters would be violently opposed to me saying this seeing as how many are disgruntled people who want to simply “buck the system” and start something “fresh.” But “fresh” is not what most planters end up with. Many end up just Febreezing the old fabrics of the organized institution and making it smell better, for a time, and organizing other disgruntled people. Let’s face the facts, most new traditional church plants (by “traditional” I mean the, “If you build it, they will come” mentality) just initially attract people who have left the church because they “weren’t being fed” (an infant mentality) or they like the “edgy new church in town” (a carnal response). Now, don’t get me wrong, reaching those people are just as important than reaching those who have never stepped foot inside a church before. But as I mentioned above, most new churches are just a perfume-covered version of the old institution.

Everyone Has to Pay the Bills

I once read Andrew Jones as saying that seminaries are partially responsible for the consumer mindset of the western church. Follow me on this – most seminaries (at least the ones I am most familiar with) do not have student loans available. Most do not have an abundant source of scholarships and grants. This makes students rely on credit cards and personal loans with high interest rates to complete their education. In turn, when they graduate, they are so deep in personal debt that they can’t plant a church because the thought of the possibility of no stable income is more than their families can bear. So, they seek out an already existing church with a promise of a stable income in hopes that “someday” they may be able to chase this vision of starting a new church. Sadly, someday almost never arrives. I call it new church abortion.

But that is just one aspect of paying the bills that affects church planting. Another aspect is the fact that most church planters spend an enormous amount of time raising money for this new work – and rightly so – only to jump into bed (apologies for the euphemism) with anyone and any organization willing to give a few bucks. We have seen it over and over again where a planter raises funds only to have to pay back upwards of 25% of their tithes and offerings back to 10 to 15 different organizations. If this doesn’t kill the forward momentum of the church, it severely hinders it. It’s this mindset that we have to be big quick along with the fact you have to pay the piper that drives this model.

Everyone Is the Next Big Thing

There are several terms in the church world that get on my last nerve. Mostly because those saying these terms are either A) copying what someone else said at a conference (we’ll discuss this matter in a moment), or B) they don’t truly understand what they are saying. Here are just a few examples of terms that drive me crazy: “Authentic” – As in, “I just want to be authentic.” or “We strive to be authentic in our worship.” As if every other church in the world is trying to be un-authentic. Really?

Another term is “community.” I know. I know. Community is desperately needed and is the fundamental building block of new churches (only if it is built with true disciples and not merely consumer minded “lay-persons”). Why this term community invokes a knee-jerk, baby-throw-up-in-the-back-of-the-throat reaction from me is because, like authentic it communicates that every other church is not about community. Even in the most traditional and dead or dying churches, I have found some form of community.

Both of these terms convey an anti-kingdom mindset. NorthWood has taught me a lot, but hands down, the largest lesson learned is the idea of the kingdom. I hear many preach, teach and talk about the kingdom but very few live a kingdom context.

Living a kingdom context means it’s not merely about you, your church, your people. It’s about all believers all around the world being the body of Christ… with HIM as the head, not the preacher. I completely believe in Hebrews 13.7 “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” The role of the pastor as a leader to be followed, respected, and imitated is key. But when that role goes to their heads, it’s a death knell for kingdom expansion. Too many want to be “THE guy.” The guy who everyone in the city calls pastor (but rarely do they want to actually pastor a city). They want to be the guy who is called to speak at all the cool conferences, the guy who writes all the cool books, the guy who has the coolest and most downloaded podcast… the list goes on and on. In short, they want to be the next big thing and they see church planting as their means of getting that prestige.

But to live in a kingdom context means that you are willing to share the limelight – even give it up – so that Jesus gets the glory. It means that you are willing to admit that there are other churches in your city who have strengths. It means you are willing to admit you have weaknesses. It means that your people have the freedom to create new ministry opportunities in their neighborhoods and workplaces… and invite others to join them! Living in a kingdom context is the most free way to live, but it costs more than most are willing to pay. Remember, to GOD be the glory and the great things HE has done.

Trapped In the Copy Room

For a while, I was seeing too many people come across my attention that had a recycled version of someone else’s vision. I would usually see that phenomenon sometime within a few months of a large conference somewhere. Guys would come in with a well polished prospectus and convinced that I had never seen or heard of anything like it (c’mon, I was at the same conference for cryin’ out loud!).

I am seeing, though, more and more people coming to me who have truly spent time with God getting a fresh vision and a true passion for their city. It’s been a breath of fresh air for sure! But I still see people trying to use someone else’s values and vision as their own. Very seldom does that work… ok, I’m being generous here… it NEVER works! They may draw a big crowd, but are they producing true disciples? Here’s the other thing about this, when I ask them what a disciple of “X” church looks like, I rarely get an answer of any kind. More often than not, I get the deer-in-the-headlight look.

So, with all that being said, what kind of planter will it take to see a real Jesus movement happen in the U.S.? Here’s my answer: It doesn’t take a “planter”… it takes a true disciple who makes disciples. I would love to hear your answers for this!

Still, this is going to be a great conference with a huge lineup. And it’ll be a sweet break. The furthest I’ve been from Mobile in the last 10 months is Baton Rouge, and that was only for a couple hours. I miss being on the road- the most therapeutic place I know. Once I leave Orlando on Friday I’ll be driving south through the everglades and then over to Florida’s Gulf Coast. Every mile south of Tampa I drive will be the furthest south I’ve ever been, so that’s going to be a nice new record. I plan to visit Lake Okeechobee, drive along Alligator Alley, and hopefully I’ll see a lot of pelicans along the gulf coast. Maybe even a manatee on the way home. I’ve driven through swampland in Louisiana, and I hope Florida is different. Even if it’s not- that’s a drive worth taking. Of course my camera will be on me at all times.

So I might post here during the week, or maybe I won’t. But at least you’ll know where I am and why.

A note from Joe: I first met Billy Mitchell a couple weeks before Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans when he was leading a group of NOBTS students to survey the French Quarter for a church restart. I didn’t meet him again until this past January in New Orleans at a Reproducing Churches Network gathering. After the storm Billy moved to Florida, and he has been planting churches there ever since. As the Church Planting Strategist for Suncoast Baptist Association, he now resides in St. Petersburg. Billy tweets here.

Near the end of the book, “Miracle in the Andes”, Nando describes the bond that had formed between himself and a young man named Roberto Canessa. They were starving, exhausted, and emotionally numb from seeing dozens of friends die horribly in just a few weeks. They had tried to escape the crash site before but the mountains seemed too big to overcome. Finally, after coming to a point where they were willing to slowly suffer no longer, they set out to find a rescuer. It was life or death. They climbed up the impossible mountain and when they were at the peak they made this declaration to each other…

“Roberto,” I said, “can you imagine how beautiful this would be if we were not dead men?” I felt his hand wrap around mine. I knew he was as frightened as I was, but I drew strength from our closeness. We were bonded like brothers. We made each other better men.

In the morning, we stood on the summit. “We may be walking to our deaths,” I said, “but I would rather walk to meet my death than wait for it to come to me.”

Roberto nodded. “You and I are friends, Nando,” he said. “We have been through so much. Now let’s go die together.”

What an amazing picture of two guys on mission together. Not only are they sent out to save their own lives, but also the lives of fourteen teammates starving and sick at the crash site. Their friends lives were on their heads.

This is pure speculation, but I can’t help but think that this mission would not have ended well if one of the men had to go it alone. Nando would not have found the rescuer without Roberto (or vice versa). I believe each man needed the other. This is a hard truth for me to grasp at times. I have been trained, like most American males to think like an individual. At times my ultimate value seems to be self-preservation or at best the preservation of my immediate family. Thankfully, God has been slowly changing that however.

As someone who has helped start some churches I’ve learned the value of someone grabbing my hand and saying, “Let’s go die together.” Other then the call of God I don’t think there is anything more powerful as authentic brotherhood. There was a time when I prayed for equipment to start a church. I spent hours praying for favor within the community. Neither of those are bad, but today I find myself praying most often for a friend like Roberto. Not just someone to laugh with, not just someone who has some shared interests, but a brother walking beside me to do WHATEVER it takes to accomplish the ultimate mission in front of us. With a brother like this, no mountain seems too big anymore.

The oak tree is tall. Conversely, the mushroom is small. It is plucked from the ground and seems to disappear. With plenty of sunshine, the oak tree grows in the open; it has many branches and can live hundreds of years. The mushroom grows in dark, damp places; it is small and provides neither shade nor shelter. The oak provides and shade and shelter to those in need. It is a beautiful symbol of life. The mushroom reminds us of fairy tales, superstitions, and witches (and mystics?). Enter Armillaria ostoyae (the Honey Mushroom). In Eastern Oregon a honey mushroom colony was found to span over 3 miles underground and is estimated to be nearly 2400 years old.

Armillaria is long lived and form some of the largest living organisms in the world. The largest single organism (of the species Armillaria ostoyae) covers more than 3.4 square miles (8.9 km²) and is thousands of years old. Some species of Armillaria are bioluminescent and may be responsible for the phenomena known as foxfire and perhaps will o’ the wisp.

Suddenly the tables are turned. It’s not that being an oak is necessarily a bad thing for a church. Its qualities are wonderful. But the oak is like a Broadway show. It’s big, it’s showy, and it lasts a while. Then it’s gone. The mushroom, on the other hand, is hidden. It grows mostly underground. The mushroom grows in the darkest, dampest places, and it can glow in the dark (Matthew 5:14?)! It’s bigger- spanning miles, not yards. It sprouts here and there, and if it’s plucked out of the ground, it will sprout elsewhere seemingly overnight. Chop that oak tree down, and it’s not growing back. A single mushroom colony can last thousands of years. It’s subversive. It has staying power. This is organic growth.

So while Rick Warren, and many other pastors for that matter, wish for you to be like the mighty oak, I pray you will take the time to consider the mushroom. May the Holy Spirit work through your church to be mighty as the mushroom- deep and wide, long-living and multiplying.

*Seriously, I really do like Rick. He seems like a cool guy. So this is not me picking on him. We just have a difference in perspective. He’s the pastor of a gigantic oak tree church in California, and I’m trying to do the organic thing in Mobile, Alabama.

Mobile isn’t an easy place for me to return to.  Going home means going back to most the mistakes I’ve made over the last 15 years.  It means going to a city where I feel outnumbered.  Sometimes it seems like I have more enemies there than friends.  It’s a difficult situation.  I faced more opposition and spiritual warfare in Mobile than I ever did in New Orleans or Fort Worth.  In some cases I’ll have to clean up my mistakes; in other cases may be forced to face those demons again.

Doom and gloom aside, I’m excited about some new friends I’ve made and that some old friends, thankfully, are still around.  I see a bright future for the church in Mobile, and with it a bright future for Mobile itself.  I have some big plans for living in Mobile, and I’ll post about those ideas in the coming weeks and months.  As for right now, I need to find a job and a place to live.

Five years ago as I prepared to graduate from the University of Mobile and move to New Orleans for seminary, I was encouraged by Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24.  “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”

May it be so.  I’ve stared into the eyes of evil before, and by the grace of God I felt no fear then.  I will have no fear now.

Until you can stand up in front of a group of people and honestly say, “Imitate me,” you have no business being a pastor or a church planter. This is the advice that has filtered down to me through a couple prominent pastors in North Texas.

The character of a church’s leaders will determine the character of the church as a whole.  How many times have you seen a church torn apart because its leaders were out of step with Christ?  What we do as leaders in the church, whether it’s in the local church or the denomination as a whole, determines the direction of the people aligned within that body.

I remember telling my dad once that I had trouble following my pastor’s leadership.  In fact, until I moved to New Orleans I don’t think I had ever had a pastor I felt I could follow within biblical guidelines.  I’ve seen the destructive ability of a pastor whose character is broken.  I’ll repeat the statement from above: until I can stand before a group of people and humbly and honestly say, “Imitate me,” I have no business leading a church.  I’m not there yet, but I work toward it every day.  What I will not tolerate of myself is to become the very kind of leader I have so openly held in contempt.

One of the first papers I was assigned in seminary was on character.  Not surprisingly, it was assigned by my church planting professor who knew that above all, the church’s leadership must reflect the character of Christ if it is to exalt God.  I’m grateful that God ordained it so I could take that class in my first semester; it laid the foundation for everything I learned afterward.

It was in that same class that I first heard the phrase “You get what you reward.”  At NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, they say “Celebrate your heroes.”  To me, those mean the same thing.  At a recent conference at NorthWood, the team brought out a panel of church members who have stepped out into society to be the change they wish to see in the world.  Our heroes aren’t necessarily the guys writing the largest checks.  They’re the ones choosing to sacrifice themselves in an effort to expand the Kingdom of God.  They’re disciples who make disciples of Christ.  NorthWood celebrates their heroes, and as a result, the people within the church are willing to become heroes themselves.  You get what you reward: if you want big check writers, then celebrate the check writers.  Expect to name a lot of buildings after people.  If you want your church to actively make disciples, then you celebrate the disciple-makers in your church.

My first and only real priority in ministry is to make disciples.  It’s not to be a pastor or to plant a church.  God hasn’t called me to plant a church; He’s called me to make disciples. If a church grows out of that work as a result, then great!  But it’s not a priority.  When the time comes that I can stand in front of those disciples and tell them, “Imitate me,” we’ll see where that takes us.  I encourage you to examine yourself in the meantime.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. [Hebrews 13:7, ESV]